We Took a Little Field Trip to a BC Farm Raising Millions of Maggots

‘This is the future of food,’ says Enterra’s Bruce Jowett. ‘We are diverting food waste from the landfill, and black soldier fly larvae are converting it into protein.’ On the outskirts of Langley City, thousands of writhing maggots are fed by conveyor belt into a kiln-like dryer, emerging half-baked and lifeless on the other side. This drying room is part of a sprawling 5,600-square-metre commercial insect farm, one of the world’s first. In the span of minutes, these black soldier fly larvae have become nutritious, high-protein food that chickens, dogs, cats and farmed Atlantic salmon love to eat. “This is the future of food,” says Bruce Jowett, director of marketing for Enterra, a private B.C. company that sells farmed fly larvae products directly to commercial feed companies. “We are diverting food waste from the landfill, and black soldier fly larvae are converting it into protein.” My visit to this facility took weeks to arrange, and frankly, I wasn’t looking forward to it. That’s because every encounter I’ve ever had with maggots came with a vomit-inducing smell attached. But the faint scent of peanuts wafting around the cooking room was a surprise — and seemed to signal that these creepy […]

Grant Brown is a passionate environmentalist, driven by a need to “leave it better than he found it”. This drive, combined with a capacity to understand power solutions of all types, helps him in his day job as VP Marketing at a start up clean technology company. His goal personally as well as professionally, is to help and inspire others to become a part of the green shift and to leave a positive legacy in the world.